individuals that have a keen interest in this war will find it interesting for some reason. individuals that are particularly excited about long arms and rifles will be especially a static disease and many pieces in one place. -- they will be especially excited this easily pieces in one place. at the same time, we also want to appeal to the general public. we put out these rifles and other instruments, but we also put out other examples of artifacts related to the civil war. and personal effects that were used by confederate soldiers to try convey the experience of what it was like for a soldier at the time. what were some of the experiences. and to try to bring that experience to life. looking at the people who were involved, so there is a personal ace to that. it is a collection that cannot be duplicated or replicated

elsewhere, so it is a once-in-a-lifetime kind of collection. an opportunity to see. it is an awesome responsibility for the museum to be the caretaker, the steward of this collection. >> find out where c-span's citie s tour is going next. you are watching "american history tv," all weekend, every weekend on c-span3. >> each week, american artifacts takes you -- the national museum of african american history and culture is currently under construction. an expected open in 2016. the museum has hosted several event since called save our 2008 african american treasures. people can bring in family artifacts and talk to curators about how best to preserve them. we talked to museum staff and participants at the museum and washington, d.c.

>> my name is esther washington. i am the director of the museum. here we are with our save our african-american treasury program. we invite the public to bring three objects. we have reviewers here find out , the history, the materials they are made from and they tell the public how to preserve them. they are greeted by someone who finds out if they have an item or not. and then if they have an object they go to our registration table. they receive some materials and sign off on permission for the museum to handle the object. then they are escorted into this room were a reviewer looks of their objects. >> today and brought with me a sample of photos took from 1937 that my mother to 1947 in brooklyn, new york. she did it from the time she was 10 to 20.

each week, on a sunday, she would have a group of her friends get together after church and they would take photos. photos at coney island, photos in the park, photos and picnics. photos in the neighborhood. just really a good opportunity for them to capture their history. the whole collection that was handed down to me because i followed with my mother's love of photography. i have a total of 300 photos with captions of the year they were taken and the people in the photos. i used to chat with my grandmother about it. she passed away at 103. i would always go through the book with her and she would share the history with me. of who they were and how they came to the neighborhood. what state they were from. a lot of them were from north carolina, south carolina virginia. our family was from alabama. i always felt that i had something special. back then very few

african-americans in 1937 had cameras. my grandmother said my mother did not have a father, but she had a camera. so she hours took pictures with her cameras all the time. i always knew this was something special she had put together that she left the family and left the world. >> mr. evans has brought in what amounts to a visual social history of black life in brooklyn, new york, pre-and post-world war ii. and the variety of scenes that his mother took. so, kids on street corners just during play or posing in a playground or trips to the beach. >> going to coney island. >> going to coney island. young couples that are literally -- clearly courting. there is a whole range of activities and whole range of seeds.

that really constitute this as a social history of brooklyn and the the black experience in a time of immense change at around world war ii, a time of gender changes as well as economic and social changes. we are looking at a window of black life that we do not have a good picture of. here we have 300 pictures of the same group of individuals as they grow up. and the ability, his mother was prescient enough to write down the names of the individuals in her scrapbook. so we can associate the names with these images. we have other collections of images, of snapshots like this but in some cases we do not know where, let alone who is pictured. this has the documentation that will allow us and others to build out from this collection.

>> we have a broken down into -- it broken down into three different types of objects. paper and photographs, textiles, and then general objects. we've seen a lot of quilts. i heard the textile people say it is a quilt city. there are family photos, old family photos. lots of paper. we have a certificate and a graduation diploma from the 1800's. so, lots of interesting things. >> you collected a souvenir. a baseball signed by daniel paige and josh gibson. it is hard to read that. either way, whether or not it was the last game souvenirs come , out of all ballgames in the -- and the negro leagues were famous for players signing

autographs with fans, just as they do today. balls would go up in two the stands and people would get them signed. you have a baseball signed by these two premier players of the negro leagues. he eventually did join the american league. he actually pitched in the major leagues for your games. and then josh gibson. he is the premier pitcher in the negro leagues. and josh gibson is exactly the opposite. he is the premier hitter, home run hitter. he is the babe ruth and hank aaron of the negro leagues. so, you have got a baseball signed by these two premier players of the negro leagues. and it is a great personal souvenir. something that you keep. and you are interested in keeping and having as a memento of your step father as well as the negro leagues.

>> my friend's mother passed away about 15 years ago, and we went to the basement and we found these dolls. and they have been in the basement for a long time, ok? and he decided to give them to me. so i kept them and i love them. my mother was a seamstress. and i am a seamstress as well. i was impressed with the way these dolls looked, and the clothes she made for them. dress them up. earrings, some of them. and they are just adorable. i was also given the set. >> we have the three specialties of paper -- photographs, textiles, and generic objects, but the textile people have objects that are bigger. it will be an evening gown or a quilt. then they show the owner how to

preserve it with archival tissue paper and typically roll it back up so they can bring it home and they tie it with an archival cotton ribbon, so they go home with their object so that it will last for another 100 years. >> i'm an independent curator from chicago. i've been doing these -- i think this is my seventh time coming into what ever the program is. whenever they do a program like this, they are looking for expert staff to review them all. i am one of the people they called to assist with the textile review. it is really varied from city to city what people have brought in. probably one of the things we see with more frequency are quilts. and that might not sound exciting, but we think it is exciting because they come in and people have a lot of connection with them for generations. they will be worn out. when they get saved, we are

excited about it. yesterday, we saw a whole array of different quilts in different -- quilts made in different parts of the country. when we are looking at them, we are looking at what the materials are that go into it because that helps us. we look for differences in the pattern or technique. one of the things i'm always looking at is the edges. because you can put on a separate binding, but you can also pick the front of the quilts and move it to the back. dr. to front is almost our southern. there are these regional variations. sometimes something is made by completely by one person. but oftentimes, women are finishing the quilt as a group. so, you see the different stitching. you get a sense of the community that it came from, beyond just the individual. so, yesterday, i think we saw what they call a signature quilt.

this would have been made as a gift for someone. and we totaled up 240 sets of initials on it. or it could have also been done as a fundraiser for a church. that sort of thing. we saw some crazy quilts. patterns are pretty crazy. we saw some strip quilts. those tend to be a special african-american technique. putting stitched fabric next to each other. and in one of the quilts, we saw there were dress fabrics. it gave us a great indication of what all resources were available. yesterday, we saw a baseball uniform from a baseball player from the negro league. that was an exciting piece. later on in the day, the family came back. we just saw a cloth today, a

traditional textile made by -- people. we have seen all kinds of things. a lot of dolls came in. not everything is old or worn out. sometimes they were special things that people safe. quite the array. our concern with textiles is that they do not get light damage. so, a lot of times people say that they are priority. caring fork and being able to pass it on. we encourage them to put it away and take it out for special occasions. but we do show people how to use acid free tissue paper and boxes, and how to support it so it will not deteriorate. we are protecting it from dust and light and little hands or pets. this is what we call preventive conservation.

>> we started in 2008 in chicago, and this is our 16th city. we have been out west. we have been to the south several times, and we have sort of hit many different cities across the country. one of our main missions is to help people preserve what we call cultural hegemony, the things they have in their basements that they might not think are important but tell a story of our history. >> this is a photograph. of my mother. she was 16 at the time. she is of mixed heritage. her father was white her mother , was african-american. and she could pass as a white girl. in south carolina, this must've been in the 1940's. this is a, i guess a creamer from my grandfather's house. and these other objects are from

a grandfather's house as well. i think they are probably from at least the 1930's or 1940's. i'm here today to get a sense of how i can preserve them. so i can leave this to my kids and my grandkids. >> i tell the story frequently of an apron that was beautiful blue and white gingham check. it had an unusual embroidery at the bottom and i promised myself i would go home and do that someday. i never have yet, but it was a beautiful, simple garment heard -- garment and the family lore was that it was from the 1930's. when the reviewers looked at the stitching, they realized it was an object that was made near slavery time. that was an amazing thing. >> so, let me ask you this. [indiscernible] >> i am not exactly sure. i am having a hard time finding this person. it does dasay who the owner was.

-- does say who the owner was. >> have you researched the owner? >> i tried but i do not know -- i've tried in many forms. >> let's see. so sarah, it looks like freeman. f-r-e-e-m-a-n late of kent county, the 13th day of november, 1807. then let's see. it appears a certain negro man named david freed from slavery. you need to look into sarah pierce freeman. it looks like she is giving -- she gave freedom to david. david is the identified negro.

5'7" high, dark complexion about 30 years old. and was raised in kent county. that has a lot of information. it is 1806, then he would have been born around 1780. clocks -- thank you for being a good steward and saving it. >> it means a lot to me and i have three children and they kn -- they know about all of this but i don't how to save it for them. so that is one of the reasons i wanted -- >> i like you even say save it for them, because it sounds like they are interested in having it. that is a very good thing. >> i would like to say that almost everybody leaves with a smile on their face. people are so pleased not only to know more about their objects but that somebody thought it was

an important thing. to them, it was the thing that was on the shelf or in the closet. down in the basement. that they have decided to bring it out today and somebody said this is important. it might not have monetary value and it might not be something in a museum ever, but it is something that tells american history and they should take care of it. >> i brought some photos my father had made when he was training in tuskegee for the tuskegee airmen. he had these mounted there. i want to learn how to take care of them and if there might be some interest in this. >> i have this crew size -- [indiscernible] you see them used in barbershops a long time ago to massage a scalp. it has the attachments that goes with it. this is something you will never, ever find again in life.

as i was telling her, if they still used this, we probably would not have any bald men out here. >> when we were in kansas, someone called to notify us that they were going to bring a firearm. that was unusual. we had to work with the venue to make sure that was ok. another person called in advance to tell us about a not see flag -- nazi flag their father had brought back. those are some of the things you would not think would appear. it is different for every city. when we were down south, we saw a lot of iron work. beautiful wrought iron. and then we also saw a lot of bluegrass baskets. the program takes on the flavor of the city we are in. >> yet. division i area. >> we have two wonderful woman with us from canada.

and they, dee showed me on the second treasures -- she was the reviewer. she showed me a picture on her cell phone of a room full of boxes. she said i made these in one day. i said, would you come back with us next time and make archival boxes to order? if a curator deemed your object in danger of being deteriorated, or extra fragile, they will order a custom box or a backboard to support it. you again put it away in an archival sleeve or something that will take care of it. we just have really had a good time teaching the public about how to preserve their things and keep an eye out for our website because in the future we will have some of this information online as well. >> i think the family always felt my mother had left a special gift for the family and the world.